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Comment by AnimalMuppet | Hacker News Reader

And when "everyone" goes to college, you get people that aren't really able to do college-level work. A college can fail them out, often leaving them with some amount of debt from the time they were there. (Worse, it can string them along for as much as they can afford, but never let them graduate, maximizing their debt as they chase the carrot of a degree.) Or it can use grade inflation to get them to "pass", but at the price of making the degree meaningless.

The better answer would be not to admit them in the first place. But there are people who, after not doing well in high school, find motivation or grow up or whatever, and are able to do college-level work, and do it well. They need a place to go.

So there's not really a great answer. But I think that grade inflation might be the worst answer, because it destroys the institution, not just the individuals.

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> They need a place to go.

That place, in the US at least, is community college with a setup to transfer once they've established themselves and acquired basic study habits and so forth, also there is much less non-academic distraction coming from greeks, athletics and campus lifestyle organizations.

This is actually better for everybody at all levels because it's hard to justify paying full tuition rates, even at a state school, for lower div classes offered at a community college for one fifth the cost or less.

Interestingly, at this level community colleges are in some ways even -more- rigorous than "real" universities because classes are very cheap so the financial penalty of retaking is much lower, and at the institutional level there is no ranking pressure to get students to graduate in 4 years.

On the other hand the peers that students will be mingling with are a much wider spread from highest to lowest in terms of ability, than at a school that has at least a minimal selection funnel. There will be a small group capable of work at the very top (ivy/MIT/cal etc) echelon who attend community college to save money or for other practical (commute, unpredictable family situations, etc) reasons, and of course a much larger cohort of people at a barely functional level of ability, but these tend to discover that they may not be a fit for college after the first year or so.

<Interestingly, at this level community colleges are in some ways even -more- rigorous than "real" universities because classes are very cheap so the financial penalty of retaking is much lower, and at the institutional level there is no ranking pressure to get students to graduate in 4 years.

I have also seen local community colleges near me actually have Profs from the R1 Flagship school "moonlighting" teaching courses in the evening. They often are freer in how work with students and also try out new material for textbooks they are authoring.

I think, the top schools should remain academically rigorous, even if that means some kids even those from disadvantaged backgrounds don't cut it, I'm of the opinion they're probably better off going to a more average school anyway, being the first in your family to get a degree, for instance is a huge leg up. There's kind of an expectation that some schools (MIT, Carnegie Mellon, etc) have more academic rigor. As you said it makes the degree meaningless, if an A at a community college is the same as an A at Stanford, what is even the point of all the added tuition and debt?

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